Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Bowsprite: Sketches and Accents on Marine Channel 13




Bowsprite paints water colors and listens and watches the traffic in New York Harbor.  As the pictures here show and the dialog below demonstates, she has a good eye and ear.  The pictures are the John J. Harvey (heroes of 9/11/2001), the W.O.Decker (So. St. Seaport historic tug), and the Bremerhavn (container ship).  So check out Bowsprite - a New York harbor sketchbook

(Indian accent, proper and polite): “British Lines, to the Dela rosa…British Lines, Dela Rosa.
(American accent): 
“Dela Rosa.”
(Indian accent): “Uh, what are your intentions, sir? are you angry?”
(American): “Yes, we’re anchoring.”
(Indian accent): “Oh, well, could you please give us some room?”
(American): “Will do.”
(Indian): “Thank you, sir…”

Beautiful accents…”dulcet” is how Towmasters describes the lyrical southern and cajun accents.

It’s not just voices one hears. One midnight, a captain announced his plans to go to sea. In the background was a quick whiff of Jimi Hendrix.

Another time, some poor captain shared his wheelhouse with some very noisy machinery, so that whenever he spoke on the radio, he seemed to be accompanied by a bagpipe quartet.


Breaking ice up river



Meanwhile, back on the Hudson river, up north there's plenty of ice.

Here are 12 Bridge's shots, taken from the tug Cornell on icebreaking and other duties.